The implosion of cylindrical shell structures in a high-pressure water environment

Abstract

The implosion of cylindrical shell structures in a highpressure water environment is studied experimentally. The shell structures are made from thin-walled aluminium and brass tubes with circular cross sections and internal clearance-fit aluminium end caps. The structures are filled with air at atmospheric pressure. The implosions are created in a high-pressure tank with a nominal internal diameter of 1.77m by raising the ambient water pressure slowly to a value, Pc, just above the elastic stability limit of each shell structure. The implosion events are photographed with a high-speed digital movie camera, and the pressure waves are measured simultaneously with an array of underwater blast sensors. For the models with larger values of length-to-diameter ratio, L/D0, the tubes flatten during implosion with a two-lobe (mode 2) cross-sectional shape. In these cases, it is found that the pressure wave records scale primarily with Pc and the time scale Rivp/Pc (where Ri is the internal radius of the tube and p is the density of water), whereas the details of the structural design produce only secondary effects. In cases with smaller values of L/D0, the models implode with higher-mode cross-sectional shapes. Pressure signals are compared for various mode-number implosions of models with the same available energy, PcV, where V is the internal air-filled volume of the model. It is found that the pressure records scale well temporally with the time scale Rivp/Pc, but that the shape and amplitudes of the pressure records are strongly affected by the mode number. © 2013 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.